Monday, October 18, 2010

From today, Oxford City Council introduces a new collection system for recyclables, where all dry recyclable materials go into a blue bin:

i.e. all plastics, glass, cardboard, paper, tins, etc. together. The little green thing takes food waste, while the big green bin is for the residual non-recyclable waste, of which there is very little. The council says it hopes to improve its recycling rate from around 40 % to over 50% with this scheme.

While the new system includes more types of material than the previous one and saves me the trouble to take some stuff to bring banks, I am having trouble to imagine how they plan to separate the stuff out. And after 30 years of separating recyclables, it goes against all my instincts to throw them all in the same bin. Guess our blue bin will be unusual in that it will always contain a layer of plastic, then a layer of paper, then glass ...